Health benefits of physical exercise are widely known. An agility ladder is traditionally used to improve the cardiovascular health and coordination of an athlete. However, the agility ladder provides limited effectiveness for strength training, particularly upper body strength training. As a result, the typical athlete will supplement agility training using the agility ladder with additional forms of training using fitness devices currently marketed to athletes. Some of these devices include large units of weight equipment and small, individual devices intended to provide a mechanism to build strength within a particular muscle group.
Nevertheless, the athlete is often inconvenienced by drawbacks that are frequently associated with the home use of such strength training devices. Some of the drawbacks include bulkiness, lack of durability, and a limited exercise range. Further, such strength training equipment is often very expensive to purchase for home use and therefore, inaccessible to many athletes.
Yet further, positioning bulky strength training equipment around the agility ladder can make the agile foot movement performed across the ladder hazardous to the athlete. If the athlete is injured, the countless hours spent training can be futile, and the efficacy of the agility ladder as a tool for increasing the athlete's agility and coordination can be compromised. Additionally, the space necessary to store individual pieces of training equipment may make the use of such individual units of equipment undesirable.
Still other athletes will use the agility ladder in a health club setting to supplement the agility training with alternate forms of training on devices available in the club. However, agility ladders are often employed to maximize an effective workout in a short span of time. Due to the requirement of having to travel to the gym, the use of the agility ladder for this intended purpose is often frustrated.
Additionally, the athlete can be traveling and unaware of where health clubs in the travel destination are located. As a result, the athlete often enlists the services of a personal trainer who can make a visit to the athlete's home or hotel room. Although some portable strength training devices have been developed in order to accommodate the frustrated athlete, such devices are similarly associated with bulkiness and a limited range of exercise. Both the athlete and the personal trainer could benefit from having a fitness device that is easily portable, comprised of minimal components, and which can enable a wide range of exercises.
While these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present disclosure as disclosed hereafter.
In the present disclosure, where a document, act or item of knowledge is referred to or discussed, this reference or discussion is not an admission that the document, act or item of knowledge or any combination thereof was at the priority date, publicly available, known to the public, part of common general knowledge or otherwise constitutes prior art under the applicable statutory provisions; or is known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which the present disclosure is concerned.
While certain aspects of conventional technologies have been discussed to facilitate the present disclosure, no technical aspects are disclaimed and it is contemplated that the claims may encompass one or more of the conventional technical aspects discussed herein.